Last of three episodes that feature an alien as big as a spaceship. A bottle episode that was filmed only on existing sets; the aliens were a combo of CG and models.
And it goes to show that you can make a perfectly good show when your budget is too low to add a lot of different sets. They're off to a star base to pick up some equipment and also Dr. Leah Brahms. Picard tells Geordi this personally because he remembered that he'd used a simulation of her to help them to solve the problem in the episode Booby Trap. She wants to study the modifications he's made. Geordi is thrilled since he sort of fell in love with that simulation of Brahms and can't wait to meet her and possibly ignite a real relationship. Guinan warns him that she will probably be different. And, of course, she is. She's actually a total bitch, simply put. As an engineer who designed a lot of the Enterprise's systems she doesn't approve of the modifications Geordi has made. It's understandable to a certain degree. It's like an instance of when the author of a book is ashamed of the movie that had been adapted from it. Geordi explains that real time survival situations are different from a research lab and that sometimes improvisation is necessary. I think from his view she seems as irrational as Salieri in Amadeus in the scene where he's visibly jealous when Mozart takes a piece he'd composed and embellishes it beautifully. I have to say this whole situation is a little heart breaking to me because the character of Geordi got short changed in the romance department all the time. He finally impresses her with an explanation of why he made the mods that were necessary in Booby Trap although he doesn't mention that he collaborated with her holodeck simulation and calms her enough to ask her to dinner.
Meanwhile on the bridge they get some strange readings and decide to go check it out since they're ahead of schedule. They find a creature in orbit around a planet and stand in awe of it. This is actually my favorite use of a giant space creature. In the pilot episode and Tin Man, the lifeforms were both made to mimic a spaceship and had the intelligence and ability to change energy into matter and create things like apples or a captain's chair as per the need of the person involved with it, one in slavery, one in symbiosis. This is a much more lovely idea. This thing is just a kind of space whale. It's a beast that acts on instinct without higher reasoning abilities or the ability to manipulate its surroundings. It scans them and then starts attacking. Since they have to respond fast they fire at it, but only on a low setting. However that's enough to kill it and everyone is shocked and heartbroken. But Data is still reading life signs from it.
Dinner doesn't go so well for Geordi. She's amused at his attentiveness, and is polite when talking about her designs this time. But she's also a little creeped out by how overly familiar he seems with her tastes and interests and leaves early. They discover that the alien had attacked in a self defensive manner because it was pregnant and the offspring within it is still alive . Then the bridge staff meets together and they debate on whether or not to try to help bring the child out of the womb via c-section.
Geordi and Brahms continue to look over different places in the ship and although she's loosened up quite a bit, she now wants to know why he has such stalker-like knowledge of her. He lies and says he's just admired her work from afar and seeing that he's interested she lets him down as gently as she can by telling him she's married. Poor Geordi. He goes back to Guinan in Ten Forward and talks it out. While all of this is going on, the others are removing the baby from the parent's body. They feel good about it and decided to move away slowly before going into warp speed.
But the baby attaches itself to the hull of the Enterprise and starts draining energy directly from the fusion generators. It's much like a scene from nature where a foundling newborn will suckle from any lactating adult it can find. Even though it's not good for the Enterprise, it's pretty cute. This is the route they should've gone with spaceship-sized aliens from the beginning instead of those jelly fish and Tin Man.
So it's time to get to work to solve this problem. Geordi has recovered from his brief heartbreak and he and Brahms begin working together very well and have settled into a genuine frienship. Brahms suggests a course of action and then just wants a list of other modifications to look over while Geordi and everyone else is working. And then the inevitable happens... she finds her holodeck simulation and is appalled. I mean, again, poor Geordi. I think it should've been enough that she ended up being spoken for. Yes, there's a good lesson to be learned from this whole situation, but I always thought it was unfair that it was Geordi who had to learn this lesson while Riker in the mean time is the womanizing Captain Kirk of the 24th century. He tries to explain and tells her that he's just trying to be her friend. Meanwhile the first attempt doesn't work and now there's three other adult aliens approaching from a nearby asteroid field. Judging by how the mother of the little space baby reacted, there's now more of an imperative to dislodge the child than just the preservation of their own power. Brahms goes to Geordi and offers the solution needed - that they would "sour the milk" by changing some frequencies. Geordi is impressed and it works in the nick of time. The baby leaves and returns to the other adults before they get too close to attack and the Enterprise leaves as quickly as possible.
It ends with Leah and Geordi having a drink in Ten Forward. You have to assume that at she'd watched the entire simulation including how they were fighting and genuinely working together and now understands that the computer had made her personality more reciprocal to Geordi's attraction than it would've been in real life. And I consider that a lot when watching this because that simulation did make Geordi look very much like a creepy stalker and her reaction to it was completely justifiable... and Geordi's minor guilt trip of saying that he was only guilty of trying to be her friend was a touch unwarranted considering what she just saw. So, I definitely think that she watched the whole thing because that's the only way she could be okay with having a good laugh about it at the end of the episode. A good ending for Geordi, if a little weird at the same time. They were going to bring Brahms in for a third episode but the actress became pregnant and was unavailable. I wonder what they would've done with her and Geordi in that episode. I guess we'll never know.
I'm not sure how to rate this one. It's a great episode with the concept of the alien creatures and the poor little baby suckling on the Enterprise. But I'm always and forever frustrated by the fact the Geordi gets screwed out of relationships and in this case had to be sacrificed to the lessons learned about stalking or even of raising ones expectations too high. I think I'll go three and a half because of that, but I really did love the aliens enough to call them a four.
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